


The Suit

by ladysisyphus



Category: Hotel Dusk
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2009-11-14
Updated: 2009-11-14
Packaged: 2017-12-10 12:54:12
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,887
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/786255
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ladysisyphus/pseuds/ladysisyphus
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Kyle Hyde walked into the hotel bar like a man wearing a borrowed suit, hoping if he held his shoulders back far enough and kept his hands fisted tight enough in the fabric of his pockets, no one would notice how ill-fitting the whole mess was.</p>
            </blockquote>





	The Suit

**Author's Note:**

> Saturday, June 30, 1979.

Kyle Hyde walked into the hotel bar like a man wearing a borrowed suit, hoping if he held his shoulders back far enough and kept his hands fisted tight enough in the fabric of his pockets, no one would notice how ill-fitting the whole mess was. He'd been in closets larger than this place before, but he'd also been in East Village apartments smaller than it, so he figured it about evened out in the great equation that added up the world. And anyway, from the moment he'd heard about the bar, he'd known he'd need to make an appearance, and for a variety of reasons. He may have been a solitary, grouchy motherfucker even at the best of times, but he was a solitary, grouchy motherfucker that still wouldn't pass up the chance the place might stock something worth drinking.

A jukebox welcomed him just beyond the door, its rainbow hues pulsing in time around the half-moon window hiding the stack of records; one was already spinning on the turntable, and the ethereal voice of Karen Carpenter filtered from out of the speakers. Kyle Hyde wasn't the kind of man for that kind of music, but he wasn't the kind of man to make a fuss about it either, so he compromised by deciding on taking the spot at the end of the bar farthest from it. It wouldn't make it any quieter, but it was the principle of the thing.

The only problem was, that seat was already not only taken, but practically laid siege to by another of the hotel's guests. He was a middle-aged guy, at least a decade older than Kyle by the looks of it, dressed in his grey businessman's suit, all hunched up on the barstool over a half-gone martini, his dark hair already starting to show threads of silver even in the bar's poor light. Another two glasses sat on the bar in front of him, empty except for the toothpicks that still skewered two olives each; he was stirring his current drink with the third, absently swirling the gin -- or at least Kyle hoped it was gin, anything else and the guy was worse off even than he looked -- and staring into it, a form of self-hypnosis Kyle knew well. He didn't even look up to register the bar's new visitor, though Kyle knew he had to have been seen, since the room was small enough that there couldn't possibly have been anything outside of that guy's field of vision.

From behind the bar itself, a scrawny guy peered at Kyle over a pair of horn-rims as he ran a rag around the inside of a beer glass that looked like it'd been dry for several minutes now. "Hi there," he said, and Kyle caught a flash of silver from behind his smile; how young _was_ this kid, anyway? "What can I get for you?"

Kyle shrugged, drumming his fingers on the well-worn mahogany edge of the bar. "What've you got in the way of whiskey?"

"I, uh...." The kid frowned and put the glass down gingerly among its fellows; he moved kind of slow, in the way that suggested he was either a pothead or he'd been dropped a lot as a child. "Got a couple bottles back here, but ... I don't know, man, I'm just filling in tonight. It's the regular guy's night off."

Well, thought Kyle as he glanced down the bar, that explained both the stockpile of empties that had built up in front of the other patron and how the glasses-wearing stringbean looked like he might still be a few years yet from his first safety razor. "Here, you see, take that glass there, the one by your right hand." He directed the kid to a clean-looking tumbler on the drying rack by the bar's tiny sink. "Now fill it up to _here_ ," he tilted his hand sideways and extended three fingers, all pressed together, "from the bottle that's got the most dust on it. Clear?"

The kid looked skeptical, but he did as he was told, setting the glass upright on the bar before proceeding to clink through the bar's stock. Kyle spread his lips thin in a patient yet obviously irritated smile; he was never amused by incompetence, only bitterly tolerant of the conditions from which it arose, and never wanted to encourage it any more than was absolutely necessary to get what he wanted. He wasn't really amused by much of anything, truth be told, and rarely smiled like he meant it, and actually _laughed_ once in a blue moon, if that. He wasn't a guy that let his face show his hand, to mix a couple metaphors about various body parts. Sometimes it was just easier when no one knew what the hell you were thinking.

The commotion of getting Kyle's drink had finally caught the attention of the guy at the end of the bar, who rolled his eyes in the kid's general direction and gave Kyle a _what-can-you-do?_ type of smile. He was generally well-groomed, though the late hour had dusted his chin and cheeks with a faint dark stubble, and his tie hung askew around his neck, its knot quickly on the way to becoming completely undone. "For a little nowhere bar," he said, his voice a low growl softened even further by a deep Southern accent, "it's pretty well-stocked."

"Is that right." Kyle gave the man a little half-smile back and took a step closer. There was a little shelf on the wall, just at elbow level, on which someone had left a couple of matchstick puzzles. He poked one of them, then decided to leave well enough alone; he'd never had the head for that sort of thing. "Guess there's not much else to do 'round here."

With a sad little shake of his head, the man gave his martini another stab, holding the toothpick with a left hand tanned around a pale stripe where a wedding band might otherwise be. "Tell me about it. I've been a lot of nowheres in my life, and I tell you, it doesn't get much more nowhere than this." Having finally managed the arduous task of putting liquid in a glass, the kid slid the tumbler forward across the bar, and the man looked from the glass to Hyde, then gestured openly to the seat next to him.

He hesitated for barely the space of a breath, trying the moment on for size, feeling for its contours like a man trying on a shirt, stretching to make sure the sleeves didn't end before his arms were ready for them to or the collar didn't button too tight for him to swallow. Maybe it was even harder than that, more like shopping for someone else, looking at your own skin and trying to remember where your bodies didn't line up, if they even lined up anywhere at all, if there weren't really a thousand miles between everyone. At that kind of distance, you couldn't ever really get to know anyone -- and so you couldn't be surprised when they didn't turn out to be what you'd thought.

And then the moment was over, and there was nothing unfamiliar at all about the way he slid into the seat next to the stranger, fanning his left hand over the mouth of the glass and extending his right. "Kyle Hyde," he said, working up half his mouth in that smug little expression he liked best when he thought the person on the other end of it couldn't tell he was being insincere.

The man let go of the martini long enough to shake Kyle's hand, and his hands were a buisnessman's hands, soft and warm and strong enough to appear confident without crushing bone. "Gary Bolno. So, Mr. Kyle Hyde, what's your trade?"

"I'm in sales," said Kyle, and it was easier said than thought about. Thinking about it was still weird, trying to think of himself without a badge, just another civilian out there in the great big world, no longer trying to bring order to it so much as just plain survive it. He was always first and foremost a cop in his mind, and probably would be until the day he died. Things like that, the way people saw you like that, you couldn't just get rid of no matter how many times you turned in your gun and badge.

"I knew it!" Gary grinned, knocking the olive-laden toothpick against the rim of his glass. "I am too. I guess we know our own kind."

Kyle nodded into the whiskey, then drank at least a finger's worth in one go. It was good like that, one big burn to dull the edge of damn near everything. "I guess we do."

"Besides," Gary added, "who the hell else winds up all the way out here except men like us?"

"Who the hell else," Kyle echoed, figuring that was the kind of question that didn't really want its own answer. With a little nod, he took another drink, this one more measured, letting himself taste it going down. Whatever bottle the kid had found, it'd definitely had the good stuff in it, the kind of whiskey that didn't fuck around. He liked his alcohol the way he liked everything in his life -- straightforward, to the point, no bullshit. That was why he was so honest all the time, because life was too short for bullshit, and Kyle Hyde wasn't going to make it any shorter by contributing to the problem.

"I'll tell you what, though, it's a lonely life, and that's God's honest truth, a damn lonely life." Gary nodded and combed his fingers back through his short hair, raking the dark strands into place. He was a handsome sort of guy, the kind who'd obviously been real pretty as a younger man, but time and gravity had done a number on him, until nothing remained of that pretty face except just enough of a hint to let you know it'd once been there. "Looking back now, I'm glad I never let any of my wives talk me into having kids, I can't imagine having to keep track of all their birthdays and dance recitals _and_ keep my own head on straight, if you know what I'm saying. It's already a full-time job just keeping track of number one, isn't that right?"

"Definitely lonely," Kyle agreed, working at his whiskey so his mouth didn't get any ideas about adding too much to the conversation. Kyle Hyde wasn't the kind of man who poured out his heart to friends, much less to complete strangers who wouldn't know what it meant to start a story with _so I've got this guy I thought I knew_. Instead, he grabbed at his own tie, loosening it enough to get at the top button of his shirt; the June night was warm, even this far inside. "No kids for me either."

"Well, that's just that many fewer folk to disappoint." Gary gave a little smile that looked about as hollow as his voice sounded. "Say, you wouldn't have a cigarette on you, would you? I ran out my last pack and the machine in the lobby's busted."

Almost as a reflex, Kyle's hand slipped into his jacket pocket, and he wrapped his fingers around the cold metal rectangle of the lighter there, brushing his thumb across the joint that connected its cap to its body. "Sorry, I don't smoke."

Gary sighed, sounding disappointed but not particularly bitter over it. "Well, all for the best, I suppose. It's just about time for my monthly resolution to quit, anyway." He drummed his fingers thoughtfully on the bar, his first two digits dancing with the kind of nervous absence Kyle had seen in Bradley's own hand the million times he'd sworn he was giving them up cold turkey. Kyle'd never started, though, so he wasn't feeling the need now because he'd never had the habit. His hands lay still, one around the lighter, the other around his glass.

With a slight tipping of the rim that might have been a silent toast or might just have been an unsteady maneuver, Gary took another deep drink of his martini. All the while, he held the toothpick against the edge of the glass, and when he placed it upright on the bar's surface again, it rolled around inside. "Not an olive man, huh?" asked Kyle, eyeing the carnage in front of them both.

Gary frowned for a second at the abrupt change of topic, then laughed. "No, I like them there, but I don't like them by themselves, if that makes sense." He tapped the surface of the glass, and from this distance, Kyle could smell the bloom of the gin.

There were things he didn't know about himself, of course, things that he could only guess at until their chance came around and he could try them on for size. But there were familiar gestures as well, and there was no harm in falling back on those when things got a little hazy. With a quick shrug, and without asking permission, he snatched the toothpick from the closest one of the empty glasses and popped it in his mouth, closing his teeth as he pulled the pick away and left the two fat gin-soaked olives resting on his tongue.

And in that second, he knew it was all wrong. He'd always stolen the olives from Bradley's martinis, of course, and Bradley had put up a token fuss about it but had never stopped him, had even gotten into the habit of asking for extras just for Kyle to pilfer by unspoken mutual agreement -- but he hadn't known until he'd placed the toothpick between his teeth and seen Gary's eyebrows lift exactly _how_ intimate the gesture had been. But seeing it now in a different mirror ... well, it made a strong, weird kind of sense, and it took all the wind out of his sails, knocking him nearly out of his borrowed clothes, hard enough that the bullet wound in his shoulder began to ache through the whiskey burn.

"Say," said Gary, dropping his voice even though the kid behind the counter probably didn't have enough brain cells to rub together to start a fire with, much less to imagine a scenario that he could possibly given a damn about objecting to, "you want to ... take the next round upstairs?"

Kyle honestly thought the answer would've been _sure_ , that this was the way it was supposed to go, how men like him conducted their arrangements; he'd heard tell about how it happened, probably done it himself a few times, after all, wasn't that what he went to those bars in Queens for? Of course, he could never be proof positive without evidence, but there was sure and then there was pretty damn sure. And this fell in the category of pretty damn sure, because even after all their time together, he may not have been able to tell when his partner was a lying, cheating traitor, but by God, he knew this much about himself.

But instead, he just felt more exhausted than he'd felt since he'd left the force by way of the East River docks, and about as alone as he'd ever been, period. He'd hung his whole life over the incident, but Bradley had been the bastard who'd handed out the rope.

Patting Gary on the shoulder, Kyle stood, giving him the kindest rejection smile he could muster. "Got an early morning tomorrow," he apologized, "but ... thanks." He fished in his pocket for a twenty and spread it on the bar between their empty glasses, figuring that a free drink may not have been a fair trade for an evening, but it was better than leaving nothing. He was nothing if not considerate of others. "...Seriously, thanks."

"Hey, now, it's fine." Gary gave him the quiet, sad smile of a guy used to rejection, and Kyle wondered which end of that expression he himself had been on more often -- giving or getting, saying 'sorry' or hearing it. There were no easy statistics on that sort of thing, of course, but he couldn't imagine he'd spent much time in Gary's place, not a good-looking guy like he was. Probably had to beat them off with a stick, more likely. Probably didn't even have time anymore to think about what might have been, if he'd really been thiking about it all that time, if he'd ever even thought about it at all.

With one last little nod of acknowledgement to their shared sorry state, Kyle Hyde shoved his hands into his pockets and strode out of the bar, never looking back, letting the unfamiliar jukebox music carry him down the hall and back to his room. This had all been a mistake, his was fairly certain, what the hell had he been thinking, he never should have come, he should have given up the search ages ago -- except as he thought that last thought, he knew he'd never give it up, not while they both still lived. As long as there was still a chance, Kyle Hyde would keep looking. It was just the kind of person he was.


End file.
